Fish Fear Me

Psst...Hey Kid, Need A Sugar Buzz?...Primo Stuff, Man

Well sure, what could go wrong?:

Many of us like to indulge our sweet tooth. But, a group of experts now say sugar is just as bad for you as alcohol or tobacco. And they now want it regulated the same way.

We all know too many sweets pack on the pounds but they’re often too hard to resist.

A commentary in the latest issue of “Nature” says sugar is responsible for the high rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. And should be regulated.

“Sugar is not empty calories. Sugar is way worse than empty calories,” said Dr. Robert Lustig, of the University of California. “Because of the way sugar is metabolized in the liver, the liver will turn sugar into fat-causing insulin resistance, all of the diseases of metabolic syndrome.”

The authors say it’s time to put restrictions on sugar, similar to the ones on tobacco and alcohol.

“What if we had an age limit to purchase soda for instance? Carding kids for Coke. I think it’s a great idea,” Lustig said.

Lord, spare us from the good intentions of the well-meaning petty tyrants. 

On the other hand, maybe this would be a great business opportunity. If this guy gets his way then the heck with it, I'm going underground and pushing sugar. I have good contacts among the sugar beet farmers of western Minnesota and plenty of connections in the transportation industry. I figure it wouldn't take long to get it all up and running and before you know it I would be moving a couple of hundred kilos a week all across the country. Maybe a couple of thousand. 

The local cops could be trouble, but my plan to take care of them is to launch a string of donut shops across the country. The regular customers will get the saccharin and stevia crap and we'll hook the cops with hard stuff. 

As far as the feds, we'll just tell them we're running guns for Mexican drug dealers and they'll leave us alone.

Yep. Should be easy street.

Over The Hump Day Politics

He said what? It was a good win for Mitt Romney in Florida yesterday. Not great, but good. Why a man of his campaign experience would then turn around and say something clodish about not being concerned about the very poor is a mystery to me. But it was a clodish statement and not meant to be indifferent or malevolent. I'm sure he will have plenty of opportunities to clarify that right up until November, if he's lucky.

She said what? I heard a somewhat bitter Gingrich supporter on the radio this morning talking about sitting out the election because Romney is no different than Obama. In the spirit of trying to gently persuade such people, I present a kind "No, he's not" and an offer to talk through it with any people who think that way and happen to stumble over to this humble blog. That would be as opposed to, "Are you out of your freakin' mind?", which would be my natural response. I'm just a giving kind of guy that way. 

Maybe eye of Newt instead? Courtesy of the Michael Medved show yesterday, I learned the Gingrich campaign was using "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor to get crowds revved up on the trail. This prompted a lawsuit from a, er, survivor of Survivor to force them to cease and desist. Now the campaign needs to come up with a new theme song. My contribution to this effort is to suggest "Burning Down the House" by The Talking Heads. Aside from the obviousness of the title, with a line like, "Strange but not a stranger" how can it not work? 

She/He said what? I guess Newt took Obama to task for singing a bit of an Al Green song at a recent fundraiser where the singer himself was present. Gingrich said, 

“I would say to him now, Mr. President, you cannot sing your way past the disaster of your presidency. I’m not gonna compete with Obama in singing because I’m not running for entertainer in chief; I’m running for president.”

That prompted this from Rachel Maddow and agreement from her guest, Al Sharpton:

"And then tonight he went to President Obama ought to stop singing, ought to stop being the entertainer-in-chief. Essentially caricaturing him in a way that almost calls out to minstrelsy." 

Minstrelsy? Seriously?

At first this once more playing of the race card kind of pissed me off, but maybe this is the moment where phony racism charges have finally jumped the shark. The singing is a petty thing to bring up against Obama, but that's it. It's not racism. Trying to paint it as such is just stupid. Even though I hate to be that blunt when it comes to political discourse, in this case that sort of bluntness is demanded. Maddow and Sharpton are just being stupid. It's really that simple.

This isn't politics. Who the hell schedules an Emergency Broadcasting System test to be done within the last couple of minutes of an hour long TV show? Who is the dumbass who does that? Bring him to me. I promise I'm not going to do anything that will leave any marks, I just want to take him out back and talk to him. There, I feel better just saying that.

Mmmmmm...

...tuna casserole.

That is all.

Another day...

 ...Another attempt to brow-beat climate change skeptics into shutting up:

Concerned that too many “deniers” are in the meteorology business, global warming activists this month launched a campaign to recruit local weathermen to hop aboard the alarmism bandwagon and expose those who are not fully convinced that the world is facing man-made doom.

The Forecast the Facts campaign — led by 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters and the Citizen Engagement Lab — is pushing for more of a focus on global warming in weather forecasts, and is highlighting the many meteorologists who do not share their beliefs.

“Our goal is nothing short of changing how the entire profession of meteorology tackles the issue of climate change,” the group explains on their website. “We’ll empower everyday people to make sure meteorologists understand that their viewers are counting on them to get this story right, and that those who continue to shirk their professional responsibility will be held accountable.”

If those people spent half as much time making scientific arguments as they spend screaming "denier" they might really have a consensus by now. Well, not really. They need to do the brow-beating and the hard sell jobs because the science is far from solid and they know it.

If you are interested in some actual science around climate change, here's a story about the missing warming over the last 15 years or so:

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

It also mentions predictions on the upcoming solar cycle that may mean even cooler temperatures in the near future.

I don't think anything there is definitive by itself, but it is one more example of temperature data that the CO2 models can't explain and a factor, the sun's cycles, that the global warming alarmists steadfastly ignore as they remain stuck on CO2. They can hurl "denier" at me and others all day long, but that doesn't make the facts disappear.

Nag, Nag, Nag

Well, I think there's at least some truth to this:

Nagging—the interaction in which one person repeatedly makes a request, the other person repeatedly ignores it and both become increasingly annoyed—is an issue every couple will grapple with at some point. While the word itself can provoke chuckles and eye-rolling, the dynamic can potentially be as dangerous to a marriage as adultery or bad finances. Experts say it is exactly the type of toxic communication that can eventually sink a relationship.

Even though I am not exactly Mr. Relationship Expert, I do have some experience in this area and I'll offer three general observations:

• If you have to be nagged to do petty stuff like change a light bulb or take out the garbage...you're wrong! Did I emphasize that enough? I don't think I did...you're wrong! Don't make me go all caps on you. This sort of thing almost always applies to guys and most of the time they are just asking for it. Now, most guys don't want to be ordered around, so a pleasant initial request and a gentle reminder, if needed, should be the norm in my opinion. If she has to get on your ass after that just to change a damn light bulb or do some other petty crap, then pal, I think you're just getting what you deserve.
• We all need to try to be honest about what we do or do not want to do. A significant amount of nagging stems from momentary lapses of honesty, courage, or respect that results in the farting out of an "okay" that has no hope of ever actually being honored easily. Hey, I'm certainly not without sin in this regard and it's something I still have to watch out for, because it's a tough one. Who wants to say no to the one they love? The thing is though, if you say you're going to deliver, then you need to deliver. If you don't want to do it, then have the honesty and guts to say no and why. There's a flip side to this too, of course. I've seen people who maneuver their partner into just such situations knowing full well that they won't be able to really come through. It's all part of a nasty little power dynamic that pretty much always ends up in breakup or tragedy.
• Finally, when your significant other is honest and says no, and I'm talking about stuff that is much more important than just changing light bulbs or some such, then don't try to nag him or her into changing their mind. Either go with it or get out. Anything else is just going to be short term drama.

YMMV. Like I said, it's not like I'm some sort of relationship expert.

Heretics

The good ship Consensus takes another hit in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal:

Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article: 

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

"The science is settled" and "The evidence is incontrovertible" are profoundly unscientific statements when applied to any system as enormously complex as global climate and ecosystems. Yet they roll easily off the tongues of the climate change faithful. Call that what you will, but don't try to tell me it is scientific.

Read the furious responses carefully tomorrow. If they stay true to form then we will see all sorts insults, accusations of bad motives on the part of the 16 scientists, and once again the assertion that the good ship Consensus is completely seaworthy. Don't expect much in the way of scientific rebuttals that you can check though. That's not exactly their style.

"No. Never. There are no real scientists who disagree about global warming. This is a lie."

Moonbase Gingrich

When I was a little kid, as opposed to a big kid, one of the things I was quite certain about was there would be operational bases on the moon by the time I was done with high school. We put a man on the moon in 1969, how could we not have moonbases by 1979? C'mon!

Not only did I become an adult with nary a moonbase in sight, but Jimmy Carter was president and My Sharona was the #1 song that year. Talk about disappointment.

Enter Newt Gingrich to finally save the day:

The United States will have a permanent manned colony on the moon by 2020 if Newt Gingrich is in charge, the Republican presidential hopeful announced today (Jan. 25).

Gingrich laid out this goal during a speech in the city of Cocoa, on Florida's Space Coast. He also said that near-Earth space would be bustling with commercial activity by 2020, and that America would possess a next-generation propulsion system by then, allowing the nation to get astronauts to Mars quickly and efficiently.

Well it's about time. Sources close to the campaign have given me an exclusive glimpse into the detailed plans for Moonbase Gingrich and I'm pleased to be able to share them with you:

Can't Do it

I think I'll skip the SOTU address tonight. I know my favorite distiller and brewer were counting on me to hold up my end of the deal, but I'm afraid a full dose of Obama's incompetence, stupidity, and overall dishonesty at this point would cause me to pull my liver, and I have stuff to do tomorrow.

Sorry guys. I hope your stocks don't get hit too hard at the opening bell tomorrow.

Let's Kill Some Eagles For Gaia!

Enviro Mental: We have to kill the birds to save them...

A controversial wind farm proposed near Red Wing plans to ask for federal permission to legally kill eagles, making it one of the first in the nation to participate in a new federal strategy aimed at managing the often-lethal conflict between birds and turbine blades.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials say they urged the developers of AWA Goodhue Wind to seek the new permit because the deaths of an unknown number of eagles and endangered golden eagles will be inevitable once the 50-turbine project is up and running.

I don't like wind farms. I don't like them because they are giant, whirring, bird killing monuments to stupid. Decades from now, children will gaze upon them in wonder and ask their parents why people were so stupid way back then.

It's not the technology itself that is stupid. Windmills can be very useful in doing all sorts of things, including generating electricity in some circumstances. My dad grew up on a farm that used windmill power to pump well water to the house and livestock barns. That application made perfect sense. And if I were to build a new cabin these days I would consider solar and wind to generate electricity. The self-sufficiency might outweigh the extra cost. No, the problem isn't the technology itself, which isn't stupid at all, it's the attempt to scale it beyond its capabilities to the electric utility level. 

About 125 years ago, several different people figured out how to attach a generator to a windmill and produce electricity. That free source of energy appealed to the greedy power company executives and they erected tens of thousands of windmills all across the country.

Oh, wait. That didn't happen. Well, that's because the greed of the power company executives was outweighed by their insatiable desire to burn fossil fuels. "God I love the smell of burning coal in the morning!", they cried as one.

Oh, wait. That didn't happen either. What did happen was the greedy power company executives felt all that free wind energy just blowing around and they tasked their best engineers to figure out how to capture it. And figure it out they did. There was one little problem though: By the time they built the damned things the electricity produced was so expensive that their customers couldn't afford it and it was unreliable as hell to boot.

In other words, to go down that path would have been stupid, so they didn't. The End.

Oh, wait. Stupid obviously has a nasty way of living to stupid another day. All over us. Sometimes on a grander scale than ever before.

Enter our federal and state governments, of course.

The states pass the mandates and the feds hand out the subsidies by the billions each year. That's the only reason why these wind farms are being built. The only reason. They make no economic sense, and by the time you add the ecological costs of the materials and the mostly natural gas power plants needed to stabilize the grid because of these beasts, I don't think they are actually "green" at all. 

Well, they're certainly "green" for the appropriately named "Big Wind" industry, but not for anybody else.

Ah, the heck with it. Let's go kill some eagles for Gaia!

Go For The Story, Stay For The Comments

I thought this was pretty funny, though the birds probably didn't:

A New Zealand farmer has been caught spray-painting hawks in a pinkish-red hue as part of a "prank" on bird-watchers who were hoping to have discovered a new species of bird.

 Grant Michael Teahan has been found guilty on two charges of ill-treating an animal, according to the Manawatu Standard.

The mystery began in early 2009, when locals began snapping pictures of the strangely colored hawks and sending them to the local newspaper. It was only after on of the hawks was accidentally hit by a car that the spray-painting ruse was discovered.

Somebody had a little too much time on their hands.

It appears that the paint did far more harm to the egos of certain bird watchers than the birds themselves. Check out some of the comments to that story though. I just read the first page and I burst out laughing. Here's a sample:

"Yeah.....but that doesn't explain the lipstick and mascara on his sheep !! Hm-m-m-m?"

"It's a lot more fun to get up early Saturday monings and rearrange all the Garage Sale signs..."

"I think it would have been better if he made them wear little hats. I would go bird watching if they wore little hats."

"i've been spray painting my children for years"

Good humor. And now I can post about Obama's stupid Keystone pipeline decision without being all pissed off. Bonus!

Bound To Happen

A good old fashioned arctic air freight train is rolling into town tonight:

Tonight: Scattered flurries before 9pm. Mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming mostly clear, with a low around -8. Wind chill values between -16 and -26. Blustery, with a northwest wind between 14 and 22 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. 

Our first real good one of the year, which is three or four weeks later than normal...at least. Ah well, it will only last a few days and then they are talking low 30s by Sunday. There's still plenty of winter left here, but earlier this week I had to flip the sun visor down as I headed west on the drive home from work. The first time for that in probably a month and it's a sign that the days have gotten noticeably longer. Before we know it, pitchers and catchers will be reporting and it will be time to start planning which seeds to buy.

In the meantime, note for tomorrow: wear gloves.

Myths of the Left: The Psalm 109:8 Lie

The generally despicable Think Progress once again shows how one can take the truth and with a little subtraction here and a little addition there, a dash of distortion and a dollop of ill will, create a nasty little bit of false propaganda about one's political opponents. In this case it is the meme that when some conservative Christians have prayed for President Obama's tenure in office to come to an end, what they are really praying for is Obama's death. Here's how they do it.

Apparently an email has been circulating since around the beginning of 2009 that tells people that it's okay to pray for Obama and it specifically cites Psalm 109, verse 8:

Let his days be few;

     and let another take his office.

There's certainly a degree of ambiguity to exactly what that means, but to turn that into something nefarious instead of a general wish for Obama to leave office requires attributing a level of malice to your average dedicated bible-thumper that doesn't pass the sniff test. They may not like Obama, but that's hardly evidence that they would violate the very first of the 10 Commandments they so earnestly try to follow and doom their mortal soul to Hell. No, to sell that to the general public is going to take a little more.

Enter the number one tool of our Wormtongues these days, Left and Right, which is to muddy the waters a bit.

You see, what they need to do here is get the rest of Psalm 109 into the picture, because it really is a  bit of a heavy duty call for God's wrath. Think Progress and others accomplish that in this case by simply dropping that little bitty ":8" and turning it into this:

Nick Sementelli at Faith in Public Life notes that Psalm 109, which is a prayer for the death of a leader, became a popular conservative meme after Obama’s election. The “tongue-in-cheek” prayer for the president was seen on bumper stickers. The relevant part of the psalm reads:

Let his days be few;

and let another take his office

May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

May his children be wandering beggars;

may they be driven from their ruined homes.

May a creditor seize all he has;

may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.

May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.

And viola! The "relevant part", as far as any consistently duped reader of Think Progress knows, is whatever they choose from the entire Psalm 109 and not just what was originally cited, the very specific Verse 8.

There you have it. After all, there's not much ambiguity to "May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow." Now some Think Progress writer can feel free to write a headline such as:

Kansas GOP House Speaker ‘Prays’ That Obama’s ‘Children Be Fatherless And His Wife A Widow’

...and progressives of the simpleton persuasion can eat it up and regurgitate it until it becomes another false and stupid brick in our political divide. 

At the end of the Think Progress post there is a mealy-mouthed attempt to tie verses 8 and 9 together, but the simple fact is the email in question did not cite Psalm 109, or Psalm 109:8,9. It specifically cited Psalm 109:8, and to say otherwise, no matter the contortions and distortions required to get there, is simply false.

Demonizing one's political opponent is not exactly new, nor does any one part of the political spectrum hold a monopoly on that as a tactic. I see it becoming more mainstream though, as this little calumny did in getting some MSM play. I'm afraid that we'll be seeing more and more of it as this election year rolls along. 

This Day In Fiction

The progressive blogosphere in the West, highly sensitive to any war crimes in Afghanistan, erupted in fury today as news spread of two separate atrocities against civilians that were committed by the Taliban.

On January 10 the Taliban attacked a government center in Paktika:

The three-man suicide assault team, which was armed with suicide vests, rocket launchers, and assault rifles, infiltrated the provincial center in Sharan, the capital of Paktika, and attacked the telecommunication center, the governor's office, and the headquarters of the National Directorate of Security. The Taliban fighters battled Afghan police and soldiers for six hours before all three were killed. Three policemen and four government workers were killed during the fighting.

Two days later, the Taliban gleefully took credit for the murder of a district governor along with two of his sons and two of his bodyguards:

Sayed Fazuldin Agha, the governor of Kandahar's Panjwai district, was killed today along with two of his sons and two bodyguards when a Taliban suicide bomber crashed his explosives-laden car into Agha's vehicle, the BBC reported. Nine policemen and one civilian were also wounded in the deadly blast.

As noted in that last link, it was just the latest in a long and deliberate stategy of attacks on legitimate civilian governance in Afghanistan and it has led to a storm of criticism directed at the Taliban from progressive sites such as Think Progress, Media Matters for America, and dozens of other progressive sites. 

Then I woke up.

From The Department Of, "You Don't Say"

CBS News:

Tax dollars backing some "risky" energy projects

Kudos for CBS in finally getting this more into the mainstream news, but the troubles of Beacon Power and most of the other subsidized failures mentioned aren't exactly news to many of us. 

Research into alternative energy sources is good and all sorts of wondrous things might come down the road because of it. But the taxpayer money dropped down the rat holes described in that article was not for research, it was to try to prop up technology that is clearly not economically viable.

It has failed in the past. It is failing now. It is obvious that it will fail in the foreseeable future too. That the administration won't stop despite all of the failure is a sign of its collective madness.

Seriously. They're batshit crazy.

Friday Stuff

Regarding Bain Capital and Mitt Romney's association, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich should be ashamed of themselves for their childish attacks. "Oh my God! People lost jobs in that sometimes harsh world known as reality!" I wish some group like Bain would have come in and taken over the place I was working at back in 2004. Maybe they would have gotten rid of the dead weight top and bottom and saved about 800 jobs. Instead, the whole thing went right in the crapper. 

As for Democrats salivating over the Bain issue: What's the difference between Romney and Obama when it comes to investing? With Romney, most people make money even though some people lost jobs in the process. With Obama, everybody loses money(Solyndra, etc) and in the end most people still lose their jobs. 

The US Marine Corps is investigating a video that allegedly shows four marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The video I saw was fairly poor quality, but I'm guessing it's enough to identify the marines in question and I would not be surprised if they are being interrogated as we speak since the head of the Marine Corps promised a swift investigation. 

I can't name a specific statute, but desecration of an enemy corpse has to be a violation of some regulation or order. Probably multiples of such. The preservation of good order and discipline demands that those marines be prosecuted if the video turns out to be real, and if convicted that they receive appropriate punishment. And that's about all I care about in this matter.

Some of the usual suspects who have chosen this moment to get their OUTRAGE!^TM on once again can stick it in their ear. If in fact those marines peed on Taliban corpses it was illegal, unhelpful to the war effort, and yes, disgusting. Yet in that barbaric part of the world, disgusting often rises many orders of magnitude higher than that, only to be met with a deafening silence from the otherwise outraged. They can spare me their hysterics.

My NFL playoff picks went 2-1, since I was basically agnostic on the Giants-Falcons game. I have to admit I didn't expect the Giants to play so well, but then I didn't expect the Falcons to stink it up as bad as they did either. It's hard to say how real the Giants are because of the latter. I'm still going with Green Bay as the winner, but I'm not quite as confident as I was a week ago.

I still have to go with the rested and tough Ravens over the gutsy but dinged up Texans. I also have to believe Tebow mania is going to meet its end for the year at Gillette Stadium. Lord knows Denver has a lot of heart on their side, but c'mon. Finally, New Orleans wins if they move the ball on offense against a tough 49ers defense. If the Saints start doing three and outs they will be in big trouble. 

It was good to see 200,000 jobs added last month, but pardon my cynicism at the way the unemployment rate has mostly dropped by removing millions of people from the workforce. The real unemployment rate is more like 11% as far as I and a lot of others read it. There is a quiet(for now) seething at the games that have been played by an administration that talks about their non-existent green jobs while they desperately kill real jobs, particularly in the energy sector.